"Our engineering departments build freeways which destroy a city or a landscape, in the process"
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Erickson’s line lands like a polite indictment: the most “rational” parts of civic life can produce the most irrational outcomes. By pinning the blame on “engineering departments,” he’s not dunking on engineers as people so much as on an institutional mindset that treats movement as the city’s highest good and anything in the way - neighborhoods, parks, waterfronts, histories - as expendable friction. The phrase “build freeways” carries the aura of progress, but Erickson snaps it back to reality with a blunt verb: “destroy.” The sting is in the banality of the process. This isn’t catastrophe by accident; it’s demolition by workflow.
The subtext is a mid-century North American trauma: urban renewal, modernist megaprojects, and the freeway revolts that followed. From Vancouver (where activism helped block inner-city freeways) to countless U.S. cities carved up by elevated highways, the pattern was the same: technical expertise wrapped in bureaucratic neutrality, producing decisions that were deeply political. “A city or a landscape” widens the charge. Even when you miss the dense urban fabric, you can still flatten the ecology; the damage just changes costume.
As an architect, Erickson is also drawing a boundary around values. Engineering optimizes; architecture is supposed to mediate - between speed and place, infrastructure and lived experience. His intent isn’t nostalgia. It’s a warning about what happens when civic imagination gets outsourced to metrics: you don’t just move cars faster; you erase the very reasons to be somewhere at all.
The subtext is a mid-century North American trauma: urban renewal, modernist megaprojects, and the freeway revolts that followed. From Vancouver (where activism helped block inner-city freeways) to countless U.S. cities carved up by elevated highways, the pattern was the same: technical expertise wrapped in bureaucratic neutrality, producing decisions that were deeply political. “A city or a landscape” widens the charge. Even when you miss the dense urban fabric, you can still flatten the ecology; the damage just changes costume.
As an architect, Erickson is also drawing a boundary around values. Engineering optimizes; architecture is supposed to mediate - between speed and place, infrastructure and lived experience. His intent isn’t nostalgia. It’s a warning about what happens when civic imagination gets outsourced to metrics: you don’t just move cars faster; you erase the very reasons to be somewhere at all.
Quote Details
| Topic | Engineer |
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